Built between 1788 and 1791 by Prussian King Frederick William II as a key entry point to the city
of Berlin, Brandenburg Gate was topped off with a statue known as the “Quadriga,” which depicted a
statue of the goddess of victory driving a chariot pulled by four horses. The statue remained in
place for just over a decade, before falling into the clutches of Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grand
Army. After occupying Berlin that fall and triumphantly marching beneath the arches of the Gate,
Napoleon ordered the Quadriga dismantled and shipped back to Paris. The horse and goddess were
hastily packed up in a series of crates and moved across the continent. Napoleon, perhaps preoccupied
with the crumbling of his recently established empire, appears to have forgotten about the statue,
and it languished in storage until 1814, when Paris itself was captured by Prussian soldiers
following Napoleon’s defeat. The Quadriga was returned to Berlin and once again installed atop the
Brandenburg Gate, this time with one change: As a symbol of Prussia’s military victory over France,
an iron cross was added to the statue. The cross was later removed during the Communist era, and only
permanently restored in 1990 during the unification of Germany.